"We all have tendency to see culture as a monolith," Scott Lamb, managing editor of Buzzfeed--a site that's become a virtual clearinghouse for Twitter naivety--told Yahoo News recently. "And one thing Twitter does is expose how untrue that notion is."

Shockingly enough, there is an absolutely gigantic amount of people on Twitter who don't know who someone or something is. Today it's Dick Clark.

"Yes, there are those who don't know about Clark," Jen Chung wrote on LAist.com. "But to be fair, some aren't American and Clark was an American pop culture figure. And the young aren't as familiar with him, because he's only really been on TV lately as the New Year's Rockin' Eve host—and in limited segments."

Of course, it's not just death that exposes Twitter's generational divide--anniversaries of historical news events show it as well.

In April, on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, the social news-sharing site Reddit pointed to a series of tweets from people who did not know that the sinking of the Titanic was real--and not just a 1997 Hollywood blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

"Wait!" user Sue D. wrote. "Titanic really happened? I thought it was just a movie."

"Guys, the Titanic was real!" @BabyDoe22 wrote. "#mindblown."

"I think the reason why bigger events exposes the divide is because people just want to participate in the conversation," Chung told Yahoo News. "They want to have a say, even though they might not have anything to say."

"People not knowing about the Titanic probably says more about gaps in the education system than gaps between generations," Lamb said. "But Dick Clark's death does expose that the cultural touch-points we take for granted aren't familiar everywhere."

But you don't always have to die or sink a ship to blow young Twitter users minds: Sometimes, you just have to be a former Beatle who shows up at the Grammys.

"Who the f--- is Paul McCartney and why is he on this?" Kristen Dewe wrote on Feb. 13 during the Grammys broadcast.

Sadly, she was not alone.

McCartney, who turned 70 on Tuesday, is one a set of celebrities who have been a constant presence for men and women of a certain age--just imagine what's going to happen on Twitter when Macca dies.

"People just coming of age now have a different group to work with," Lamb said. "There's something unsettling about realizing that your references are dated."

Originally Posted by RandyInHeaven

Devin - how does it feel to know that there are still more women in the world that would fuck me at this very moment than would fuck you?

Re: I Weep for the Future

Originally Posted by SoulDischarge

Eh. Ignorance of sort of minor historical events and figures (even if they are rather recent) isn't worth getting into too much of a tizzy.

The LA Riots happened 20 years ago. I'm really not surprised that people don't know who Rodney King is, especially if a lot of these twitter posts are from individuals born after the incident. I just see a lot of this as a generation gap.

Re: I Weep for the Future

Originally Posted by Robin

The LA Riots happened 20 years ago. I'm really not surprised that people don't know who Rodney King is, especially if a lot of these twitter posts are from individuals born after the incident. I just see a lot of this as a generation gap.

The riots were a pretty important socially-relevant historic event. It's like saying not knowing about the Kent State shootings is a 'generation gap' thing.

Originally Posted by RandyInHeaven

Devin - how does it feel to know that there are still more women in the world that would fuck me at this very moment than would fuck you?

Re: I Weep for the Future

I don't need to make a thread to prove my superiority. Also, it's cute how you've started following me around. I'll probably be in the Bad Mood thread in a bit if you want to attempt to troll me in there.

Last edited by captncrzy; 06-19-2012 at 08:35 AM.

Originally Posted by RandyInHeaven

Devin - how does it feel to know that there are still more women in the world that would fuck me at this very moment than would fuck you?

Re: I Weep for the Future

Originally Posted by xuclarockerx

while I agree with the general sentiment of the OP, i don't think kids using twitter think of it as 'look at me!' so much as a genuine communication tool.

People that know how to use twitter know how to use google. A quick search will provide you with the latest story from whatever media outlet is reporting, and most likely there will be some back story to the history of said dead person. Also, using twitter is different from hearing someone died on tv and just saying "who was ____?" You have to go through the same amount of effort to tweet as you do to search something on google.

Re: I Weep for the Future

Originally Posted by nathanfairchild

People that know how to use twitter know how to use google. A quick search will provide you with the latest story from whatever media outlet is reporting, and most likely there will be some back story to the history of said dead person. Also, using twitter is different from hearing someone died on tv and just saying "who was ____?" You have to go through the same amount of effort to tweet as you do to search something on google.

We should get rid of all the threads here along the lines of "Tell me about the FYF 2012 lineup" because, shit, wtf can't people just Google the bands.

Originally Posted by getbetter

If you can't make the deadline you cant make the deadline. I didn't stop playing pokemon last night for nothing.

Re: I Weep for the Future

In case its not clear I'm being sarcastic. "Who is Rodney King?" and "Who is Rodney king again? I forgot" are people asking their friends/followers/etc for information. And it's likely that they got reasonably quick responses that were more or less personalized to their interests.

I find those tweets far less alarming than something like "I don't know who Rodney King was and I don't care" would have been.

Originally Posted by getbetter

If you can't make the deadline you cant make the deadline. I didn't stop playing pokemon last night for nothing.

Re: I Weep for the Future

Originally Posted by nathanfairchild

People that know how to use twitter know how to use google. A quick search will provide you with the latest story from whatever media outlet is reporting, and most likely there will be some back story to the history of said dead person. Also, using twitter is different from hearing someone died on tv and just saying "who was ____?" You have to go through the same amount of effort to tweet as you do to search something on google.

This is like saying that if you know how to talk, you know how to listen. Sorry, but the people who tweet volumes of empty text are more interested in yapping their lids off than they are about knowing or learning anything new themselves. What? Who? Huh? Ya? Twitter is to talkers as google is to listeners.

What I don’t understand is why anyone would actively go out and search twitter for the bottom of the barrel and report back on it when there is actually funny, informative, and useful tweets out there.